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Gil Amelio's 500 Days at Apple

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the looking-back dept.

Sabah Arif writes "Apple Computer was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy on January 31, 1996, when Gil Amelio succeeded Michael Spindler as CEO. The first thing he did was turn down an acquisition offer from Sun Microsystems, then he moved to secure Apple's short term financial future by having a huge bond sale. As he restructured the company (and cut 3,000 jobs), Amelio realized that the Copland project would never finish, and decided to buy NeXT Software, paving the way for Steve Jobs' triumphant return in 1997. Read the whole story of Amelio's 500 days with Apple."

3 of 42 comments (clear)

  1. interesting to see by toQDuj · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It appears Amelio already did much of the reorganisation needed for keeping the company afloat, thus paving the way to success for Jobs.
    However, the information on the discussions with Gates shows that Amelio wasn't as charismatic as Jobs was, and that may have been the killing blow.
    It also shows the disastrous effects a ruined presentation can have. Equipment failures and bad planning forced the CEO to ad lib his presentation and it turned into a badly cue'd 3 hour "drone-athon" instead of the 1.5 hour show it was supposed to be. Heed this warning all ye gentlemen.
    All in all an interesting read that also shows the Jobs already forcing things to his hand in the few months he got back. Apparently he also had Jobs afficionado's in place since the early days in various positions at Apple.

    Cool.

    B.

    --
    Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
    1. Re:interesting to see by Ohreally_factor · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm not sure what you're talking about. MS did agree to develop Office for OS X, once Steve was the "interim" CEO (aka iCEO). Not only that, but MS also agreed to invest $300 Million in non-voting shares of Apple stock. All in exchange for Apple shipping Macs with IE pre-installed.

      Did Jobs achieve this by threatening Gates? I don't think so.

      Rather, MS was feeling anti-trust pressure from other quarters. Pointing to this deal, they could say, "See? We're not engaging in anti-copetitive behavior. We're developing Office for a competing OS."

      --
      It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
  2. Comment about the jet by Miros · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I diddnt like the way the writter wrote this paragraph

    "Amelio had long been an avid amateur pilot, and he owned his own private jet that Apple used. Instead of allowing the struggling Apple to use the jet free of charge, Amelio created an independent company, Aero, to manage it and charge Apple for any fuel and maintenance the plane might need during company flights."

    It makes it sound like he should have let the company use his jet for free, meaning that he would pick up the tab for fuel and maintenance, which, for a jet, has to be horrifically expensive. How is it unreasonable to have the company pay for the fuel and maintenance on something like a jet? It's not like he was charging a rent or anything...